Repair
In this, our chapter on enamelware
and waffle towels, it’s perfectly fair
to recast me some adjutant
for homeward things and puttering jobs—
her greyloaf darling of hinges and knobs,
and languid co-inhabitant.
But here’s the truth of it—when it’s unkind,
I fear I feel I’ll fail to unwind
the cord of what needs fixing, clutching,
as I do sometimes, at measliness,
struck dumb in sulk and uneasiness
inert—always untouched, always untouching.
Still other times in grace,
it opens to new passages. Perhaps
I am the last to feel this relapse
of some kind, or, let’s say, reversal,
from time when pasture, grove and river run
announced her course, each congregate one
telling the marvel universal,
to now—when the pompish Zeppelin of May
above Chicago draws on the way
her gladness still buoys every thing
aloft—as if one sullen hour (the kind
to which my kind is bleakly inclined)
from her might all uproot the fairy ring
that reins our days in place.
